Don’t reduce Pokharan to an Ayodhya

The nuclear tests will then be reduced to yet another partisan issue, ideal for the next elections. This falls into a pattern. Four consecutive general elections in India since 1984 have had one thing in common: at least one of the major contenders for power banked on an emotive issue.

A disgusted Ramakrishna Hegdehad reacted to the Congress party’s landslide victory in 1984 riding on a sympathy wave with a poser: Whose body will they show in the next election? Fortunately, no one showed anyone’s “body” in 1989 but the 1991 election saw the tragedy repeated in the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi.

Meanwhile, the BJP gained much more through the emotive appeal of the Ram temple raising its tally in the Lok Sabha to 118 from 88 with almost a nine per cent increase in vote share. L.K. Advani crisscrossed the country in his Ram Rath drawing large crowds in his “mission” to have a temple at Ayodhya. The temple is yet to come but the BJP has captured power.

Not to be outdone, the Congress this year exhumed the memory of Rajiv Gandhi 18 months after it had lost an election. Its logic was simple: Gujral’s reluctance to drop the DMK ministers following the Jain Commission’s interim report would create a sympathy wave like in 1984 should the election take place “now.” It misfired: emotive issues work, not always asexpected.

The BJP realised this after the Babri Masjid demolition when it lost the Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh. So it played up and played down the issue in subsequent Assembly elections depending on whether it was in the northern or the southern states.

It probably played up the issue in its manifesto in 1998 because it knew it had to drop it in any case as it was expecting to head a coalition with former socialists, Dravidians and Congress groups as partners. And its deletion along with other contentious issues from the National Agenda for Governance was only expected.

If the era of coalition is going to stay — as Vajpayee himself has quite often asserted — then emotive issues will have to be replaced with more acceptable and wider ones. That’s why the BJP agreed to downplay Ayodhya and the Congress, under Sonia Gandhi as president, has put the Jain Commission’s report on the backburner. The final report has been submitted, yet there has been no demand — forget the threat of agitation –for placing it along with the action taken report.

And now there are the nuclear tests. While about 45 per cent of the population, which is below the poverty line, has little to celebrate as the government is still silent on what the tests mean for them, the middle class is going ballistic. Political parties — from the main opposition Congress to the Left — had to take this into account while formulating their response.

There’s a clear indication of a post-facto consensus emerging on the tests. Sonia’s Congress muted its earlier strident demand that the government should explain the rationale behind such a move, its timing and why the party was not taken into confidence.

But on May 14, after Vajpayee’s meeting with Sonia Gandhi, the Congress took the issue beyond I, me and my party. “The nuclear question is a national matter, not a partisan one,” she said. “On this, every Indian stands united.”

Vajpayee might have succeeded in persuading the most difficult political opponent to fall in line andface possible sanctions unitedly as one country. He explained that the BJP had no intention to make it a partisan issue. That’s fine so long as political parties are convinced that it’s an agenda beyond Hindutva.

The RSS may have agreed to put the temple on the backburner, not to embarrass the BJP coalition, but it has appropriated the nuclear agenda. The VHP, which has so long been defined by the temple issue, has also complimented the government for the successful test. It has so much to rejoice. The Organiser, mouthpiece of the Sangh, brought out a supplement on 25 years of Pokharan ’74 which coincided with the latest tests.

RSS pracharak and BJP’s new party chief Kushabhau Thakre went to the extent of revealing that the 13-day BJP government in May 1996 even contemplated such a test already, but desisted on the ground that it would not be taking major policy decisions before it acquired legitimacy. And once it got this legitimacy, it has made “Buddha smile again.”

Vajpayee’s success is now beingthreatened by his overzealous Sangh brothers. The Prime Minister has often been described as the right man in the wrong party. But if he lets India’s nuclear tests be packaged as the Sangh Parivar’s shining achievement, Pokharan will become another Ayodhya: an issue that will divide the nation.